CJ samurai !!!!!!!!
For those who don't know Afro Samurai follows the life of a man named Afro who wants vengeance for his fathers murder. His father, who once wore the number one headband has been killed and the headband was taken from him. Now he is on a mission to fight the man who killed his father, and kill him.
The story goes deeper than that, as Afro himself is a very interesting character. But you don't get into too much of that in the game. And a lot of the story is missing from the game, but that's to be expected. The best part of this is to be able to fight all the great fights from the series.
Speaking of fighting, here's how it works. Three buttons are used for hitting. The standard light heavy kick attacks. Here's where the game gets a little different and fun. You can chain together all types of combos, some on the flashy side, and really make a fight come alive. Then besides that you can hold the L trigger and go into focus mode where you can shop vertically, horizontally, trip, grab the enemy, do flips, rolls, and some other things as well. All of that is used to finish off most of you enemies. When you go into that mode you can hold down one of the sword attack buttons and when it flashes Afro will slice and usually cut whatever limb that you were pointing at off. (Or you can go diagonally right across the guy if you are feeling like a jerk, today.) The fighting is actually surprisingly well done and really keeps the game from getting boring during its short play time.
There are also some running, jumping, Prince of Persia type things to do in the game. They aren't used so frequently, except for a few levels. They work out ok, and the penalty of falling usually isn't too bad, so it's ok.
Now here are the problems. Some of the boss battles are very, bleh. Nothing too special happens in them. I was a little disappointed with Kuma boss fight, and the final one with Justice. But the insane one against Afro-Droid and somebody else (won't spoil it, since it's sort of a surprise.) really shine.
A few more annoyances were present. The big one that I'm sure will get the most complaint is the camera. For whatever reason they decided to make the X axis on the camera backwards. For me, I just adjusted, and it was no problem. For others, they seem to have a hard time doing it. But there is no way to change it, and I do wonder how they came to that decision. It's just kind of odd.
Lastly the sound effects are odd. Or, sometimes not present at all. There will be times of dead silence where you could tell there should be some sort of sound there. Or the sounds didn't hit with the force you think they should have. Kind of what the last 3 prince of persia's were like. That was an annoyance, but it wasn't a horrible thing. Just made the game makers seem lazy.
The music was great.There were quite a few full rap songs all put in the right places, and the music composed for the game was just as good. The game features some of the most memorable music I have heard in a while, and SHOULD be featured for best original soundtrack in next years game awards. (kinda early to be talking about that, huh?)
But in the end it was a pretty fun ride. The fighting was furious and fun, but still topped by the big boys of Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry. The story was alright, and gave a different perspective on things. Of course Ninja Ninja provided plenty of laughs. To fans of the show, depending on your love for Afro, you could either rent this or buy it. I'd prefer renting it, but I already bought it so, whatever. To people who have never seen the show, watch it before playing this.